By Ariana Hameed
What do fifteen year olds on a first date and married couples on a night out have in common? Apparently, Snow Patrol. On April 11th, Snow Patrol made their return to the Anthem for their newest album, The Forest Is the Path (2024), a couple band members fewer but hardly worse for wear.
At nine o’clock almost on the dot, the lights dimmed and the band members walked casually onto the stage, as the crowd–young and old–screamed and clapped their name. A large screen behind them lit up with “Snow Patrol” blasted across the top, before it dove into trippy visuals with the first stroke of the guitar. The screen cycled through different animated visuals with each song, often repeating the motif of a tree or a forest, referencing the title of their most recent album. Dressed in a simple gray button down and pants, Gary Lightbody and his bandmates aren’t here to impress anybody. This is their gig; unpretentious as they are unassailable.
Although this was a seated show, the audience was on their feet the entire time, in easy camaraderie with one another. In between songs, Lightbody joked casually with the crowd, as if this were a garage show in his buddy’s backyard and not a venue of over three thousand. He asked the crowd, “do you like to be called DC or Washington?”(to which the crowd overwhelmingly responded DC), laughing and saying “the next song only works with a three syllable city.” With each quip, the stage faded further and further into the background, until it just felt like some old friends having a jam.
During “Called Out in the Dark” off their sixth album Fallen Empires (2011), Lightbody invited the audience to sing along to the chorus, singing “this is your life, this is your time” louder and louder each time. After over thirty years in the band, performing all over the world, it was clear that the band was totally secure on the stage, genuinely enjoying themselves and reveling in the kind of luck that allows anyone to make art for a living. When he hit a wrong chord or two, he’d just laugh and say “ah, we’re old” in that quintessential Irish accent and keep moving.
Nevertheless, nothing felt worn out about this performance. Lightbody sang with as much passion and vulnerability as ever, and Nathan Connolly and Johnny McDaid tore it up on the piano and guitar, at this point masters at their craft. Even when they played “Chasing Cars,” by far their most famous song to date, you could almost forget it’s one of the most played songs in the UK, as Lightbody kneeled at the front of the stage, pouring seemingly everything into the words. It makes one wonder what it must be like to sing the lyrics you wrote almost twenty years ago night after night, haunted or perhaps comforted by these souvenirs of your past. But in the space of a two hour set, something like a holy place, all our ghosts might revisit us, and we might just thank them for it.
(Originally published May 3, 2025)
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